Today's Show:
With money tight and more of it going to fill up your gas tank instead of your AV rack we thought it would be a great time to discuss an article on haggling. Jennifer DeFeo has written an article for Electronic House entitled "10 Tips for Haggling with A/V Retailers". We also discuss the highlights of the Entertainment Merchant Association 2008 Annual Report.

The Mission of EMA is to promote, protect, and provide a forum for the common business interests of those engaged in the sale, rental, and licensed reproduction of entertainment software such as motion pictures, video games and sound recordings.
  • Approximately $24 billion home video market continued to be the largest segment of consumer movie spending by far, accounting for 49% of all consumer movie spending in 2007.
  • Home video generated $15.9 billion in sales and $8.2 billion in rentals in 2007.
  • Nearly 9 million high-definition discs were sold in 2007, for which consumers spent more than $260 million. But to put this number in perspective, in 2006 1.6 Billion discs were sold.
  • It is estimated that, in 2012, sales of Blu-ray Discs will exceed those of standard DVDs and will generate sales of $9.5 billion.
  • Home video spending is projected to increase to $25.6 billion in 2012.
  • Traditional rental stores, dominated by Blockbuster, accounted for 73% of the rental business in 2007. Online subscription rental (such as Netflix and Blockbuster's Total Access) were 25% of the market. Kiosk rental doubled its market share to 2%.
  • There were approximately 10,000 DVD rental kiosks operational in the U.S. at the end of 2007.
  • In 2007 video game hardware sales totaled $7.04 billion, which represented a 54 percent increase over 2006.
  • Sixty-seven percent of American heads of households play computer games.